176 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
feels him. Therefore it is declared to it, that it
(Reason) is in its own life only a counterstroke to
the right life ; and if it find in itself no hunger or
desire after that from which in the beginning it
arose, that it is in its own life only a foolishness
and play, wherein wisdom brings its wonders to
pass.
36. For Reason sees in the wise man also such a
folly according to the outward nature, and :ees
how God abandons this folly of the wise,
that it must stand in shame and reproach before
the self-willed, foolish subtlety, which neverthe-
less knows not its end. Therefore foolish Reason
supposes there is no deliverer, and knows not how
the wise man is delivered in himself and freed from
the inherited folly by immergence of his own will.
For his own will, through the pain and opposition
of the godless, enters into its breaking and into
its willing nothing, and sinks again into its first
origin, as into God's will, and therein is born anew.
And that God is not served by the coarse, mortal
flesh, that he should introduce deliverance into
the animal, self-willed life ; but that to him the
matter lies in this, that self-will should break,
and sink again into God. Thus is the inward
good nature comprehended in God's will; and on
the mortal body is the more pain laid, that the
individual, natural will may not enter again into
a desire of its own for selfhood, and set itself up
as a ruler over the inward ground, and destroy the
true image of God.
37. This, earthly Reason understands not; for
it knows not how God dwells in it, and what God's